August 26, 2008

You've Got A Brand Problem!

In observance of "Worldwide No Blogging Week" The Ad Contrarian is -- you guessed it -- not blogging this week. Instead we'll be posting some oldies. Here's one.

There was a time in America when every problem was a "communications" problem.

If you couldn't get along with your husband, you probably weren't "speaking the same language." If your kid was incorrigible, you just couldn't "get through" to him. If your boss didn't like you, you "weren't on the same wavelength." There were no problems of substance, just problems of communication.

Of course, sometimes your husband is just a pain in the ass, and your kid is a nasty little shit, and your boss is an overfed bozo. And all the communication in the world won't help.

Today we have the business equivalent of this. However, instead of communication, the problem now is always "the brand." So if your product is crappy, or your stores are dirty, or your service is lousy, or your business strategy is stupid you, my friend, have a brand problem!

Call in the branding consultants. Pay them a few hundred thou and let them study your brand for a few months.

They'll give you a big fat report, filled with charts and graphs and the latest up-to-the-minute buzzwords and bullshit.

It won't make your product any more appealing, or your stores any cleaner, or your service any better, or your business strategy any smarter. But if someone upstairs asks what you're doing you can make a nice little PowerPoint presentation.

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans.""As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."